


Sweet Nostalgia

by fatale_distraction



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, High School flashback, Humor, Lesbians, Science Girlfriends, Science Lesbians
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-08-10
Packaged: 2018-07-26 12:57:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7574872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatale_distraction/pseuds/fatale_distraction
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a busy night of busting at an NYC high school, the girls are feeling nostalgic, kicking back with a pizza and a few beers. Holtzmann is coerced into revealing her first romantic relationship, and it's not quite what the others are expecting.<br/>If you want to share this on tumblr, please reblog directly from me at the following link:<br/>http://fatale-distraction.tumblr.com/post/147913864779/sweet-nostalgia-chapter-1-fataledistraction<br/>It's super helpful for me and makes it way easier for people to find me when my requests are open! Thank you!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Teen!biologist!reader x teen!Holtzmann request.  
> There will be NO smut or explicit content in the flashback scenes of this fic! There may end up being some between adult!reader and adult!Holtzmann, but there will be NO underaged sexual content in this fic.  
> Otherwise, please enjoy!

It was somewhere close to two in the morning. The Ghostbusters had just finished a successful raid on a highschool campus, having rid it of several class III apparitions. To celebrate their multiple catches, Abby had called out for pizza and Holtzmann had broken out a twelve pack. The girls were going at both with great vigor while laughing and waxing nostalgic. Tramping through the darkened, empty hallways of the school had brought back a lot of memories, and they had begun to exchange their best stories. As the early morning progressed, they somehow managed to steer the subject toward old boyfriends and teenage romantic exploits. Patty had just finished up a wild tale about a college boyfriend who turned out to be part of a weird doomsday cult.

"What about you, Holtzy?" she asked when the others were done laughing and wiping tears from their eyes. 

The blonde gave a funny exasperated grimace. "Naaaahhh, you guys don't want to hear about..." she waved her hand around vaguely. "All...that...stuff."

"Uh oh," Patty intoned while Erin and Abby 'oooh'd' in unison. "Sounds like a story there; out with it, baby."

All three immediately began egging Holtzmann on, cajoling and coercing around laughter, wise cracks, and wild assumptions. Finally, laughing and chewing on her straw absently, she conceded. 

"All right, all right..." she put her hands up in surrender. "Okay. It was high school. I was this...dorky super nerd building robots and Tesla coils in my backyard." Abby laughed and Patty stared in horrified awe. "Ya know, normal teenager stuff," Holtzmann flapped a dismissive hand. Her eyes took on a faraway, misty look and a lopsided, sentimental little smile lifted her lips. "And there was this girl..."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO I AM BAD AT SCIENCE

The bell rang shrilly, jerking you out of a deep concentration. It was a movie day, but you were only half paying attention to the documentary on the African Cheeta, as interesting as you found the subject. You had commandeered a microscope and some slides and were absorbed with observing the mitosis of a cell. While the rest of the class stampeded out of the classroom, you took your time packing your things up until there was only one person left. It was a blonde-haired, blue eyed girl, but not the kind that ended up as every guy's weird fantasy. Her wispy curls were clubbed up into a messy, frizzy knot and her eyes had purple bags under them and were focused with burning intensity on a scrap of metal she was poking at with a pair of pliers. 

"Jill, class is over, pack it up," the teacher drawled in a bored tone.

The girl looked up, and your eyes met across the room. She had a screwdriver tucked behind one ear and a pen jabbed through the apocalypse of curls on top of her head. She seemed to realize suddenly where she was and hurriedly began throwing her things haphazardly into a faded green army medic's bag, gathering it to her chest and bolting from the room with her head ducked down. Making a split-second decision, you took off after her, clutching an advanced biology book in your hands. 

You'd seen her a lot before, and had most of your higher level science and math classes with her. Her name was Jillian, but you didn't remember what her last name was. All you really knew was that she was a giant nerd and as a result had about as many friends as you did: zero.

"Hi," you gasped as you caught up to her in the hall. She started violently, almost dropping her bag, then looked side to side and even over her shoulder before looking back at you with an oddly direct gaze for someone who seemed so shy. Now that you had her attention, you weren't entirely sure what to do with it. Her blue eyes bored into you and you felt like she was mentally cataloging every aspect of your appearance: from your hair to your clothes, to your slightly blemished skin, finally settling on the biology textbook in your arms. 

"That's not our bio book," she replied in lieu of greeting, squinting at the title. "That's an Honor's program college text." Her fixed darted back up to yours and fixed there. "What're you reading about?" she asked intensely.

You were beginning to see why people avoided her. It wasn't just that she was a dork or a nerd like you. She was intimidating, and more than a little strange. But no one had ever shown the slightest interest in your personal intellectual pursuits.

"I'm studying cellular mitosis," you answered hesitantly. "Our teacher just kind of glossed over it and I wanted to know if it was possible to inorganically stimulate the mitosis process." Jill nodded thoughtfully, not taking her eyes off of you. In addition to her uncomfortably focused gaze, she also apparently had very little sense of personal space. She stood only a few inches away from you as it was, and was leaning intently forward.

"That's awesome," she said quietly.

"What was that thing you were working on in class?" you asked, exercising every ounce of self-control you had not to take a big step backwards. You didn't want to start things off poorly by insulting the person you were desperately attempting to befriend, possibly the only person in school who would willingly talk to you about something besides copying your notes. 

She gave you another detail-oriented once-over and then nodded as if you had passed some kind of test. You felt a weird sense of relief at this. "Come with me," she instructed, then turned abruptly on her heel and took off down the hall. Your brain took a split second to process the sudden shift and you belatedly hurried after her. Other students jostled the two of you as you went, like you were simply nuisances they couldn't quite avoid, like a weird crack that ran across the length of the tiled hallway. 

Jill led you to her locker, undid the combination lock and then glanced over her shoulder at you with a dramatic pause. Then she threw the door open with a clang and a flourish. She waited for your reaction, eyes lit up expectantly. Inside the locker, instead of books and smelly gym clothes, was a mess of wires, connectors, scrap metal, circuitry, adaptors, and blinking LED lights. It was certainly an impressive mess, one of ordered chaos, but you couldn't quite figure out what it was supposed to be.

"What does it do?" you asked in an awed whisper.

"I have no idea," replied Jill in an excited hush. She was grinning ear to ear and her eyes fairly sparkled with enthusiasm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: More bad science and Michigan J. Frog.  
> Sorry for short chapters, but things have been unexpectedly super busy for me lately?! Lots of wedding planning, exhaustion, and various adult responsibilities. Gross, right?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Holtzmann recounts her first kiss with her high school girlfriend and the tragic end of a science experiment.

From that first day onward, you had become fast friends with Jill, whose last name you discovered was Holtzmann, which was also what she preferred to be called. 

"Jillian isn't mad scientisty enough," she had mentioned by way of explanation. 

Together, you started working on projects, combining you biological expertise with her engineering prowess to create some truly intuitive designs. With Holtzmann's help, you managed to create an inexpensive prosthetic heart valve for small animals like cats and even mice.

Currently, the two of you were working on your most ambitious project yet, a fully functioning, realistic mechanical frog for use as an alternative in classes involving dissection. Holtzmann was also attempting to program the metal poppet to dance to the Michigan Rag. It seemed like everything was a pun to her sometimes, but you didn't mind at all. She had a surprisingly good sense of humor for someone so quiet in class and was surprisingly loud when you were alone together.

 The two of you were hard at work in the Holtzmann garage, bent over a cluttered, chaotic workbench covered in mechanical frog parts and stretchy, plasticy green rubber. You were elbow deep in highly detailed anatomical blue prints with ruthlessly thorough notes scribbled in every available space while Holtzmann spun in circles on an office chair while fiddling with a pack of balloons to try and simulate the vocal sac, but the balloons kept popping every time she tried. 

Giving up, Holtzmann threw the balloons down, propelled herself over to you, miniscule screwdriver in hand with a pair of hyper-magnified goggles strapped to her face for working on the tiny inner workings of the robotic frog. You collaborated on the metal innards for a time, Holtz bending her curly head close to the open chest cavity while you gave precise verbal directions and compared her work to your cluttered diagrams, including one bearing striking resemblance to Da Vinci's Vitruvan Man, only as a frog. Holtz had taken it upon herself to draw him a top hat as well.

Suddenly, she sneezed violently and without any sort of warning whatsoever. Just a swift explosion of spit and dusty mucus. Her screwdriver slipped and went haywire, jabbing several pieces loose. She swore creatively while wiping her nose on the upturned cuff of her sleeve. Holding back laughter, you passed her a slightly battered box of Kleenex from which she plucked a crumpled handful of tissues and blew a large honk into it. 

"Shut up!" she griped with good humor while you snickered at her behind your hand. She hurled the wadded up bundle of tissues at your head. You squealed a protest ad rocked backward on your stool to avoid the snotty missile and the legs teetered dangerously on the oil slicked concrete. Leaping up from her rolling chair, Holtzmann reached for you in an attempt to keep you from toppling over. Unfortunately, in her haste she managed to get her legs entangled in the spoked legs of her own chair and you both went down in a wailing heap of flailing limbs and spinning chairs. 

Groaning, you rubbed a sore spot on your back, your shirt now stained with dirt and grease from the garage floor. Holtzmann rolled over onto her side with a moan, clutching a knee dramatically. You gave each other sympathetically pained looks as you composed yourselves after your near death experience. Lying on her side, Holtzmann's eyes kept focus on on yours as the various aches and pains of her fall subsided in dull pulses. A faint almost wry smile curved her lips as she stared. After spending a lot of time with her over the past few months, you had become accustomed to her intense looks, but there was something distinctly different about this one. There was still that detailed cataloging feeling, but it was more gentle and affectionate than you'd ever seen before. 

"Are you okay?" you asked awkwardly, figuring she had struck her head on the way down and was just dazed. 

She blinked and raised herself up on one elbow. "Yeah," she replied softly. "I'm fine."

Holtzmann moved closer, leaning over you and gently lowering herself. Your eyebrows shot up, your heart beat sped up like a revving engine, and your breath caught tight like a trap in your chest, as if your thumping heart and frozen lungs were fighting for space in your ribcage. Soft brown lashes feathered against her lightly freckled cheeks as her blue eyes drifted shut. Her lips touched yours like the tremulous flutter of delicate butterfly wings. You let out the breath you had forgotten you were holding in a light gust. Your eyes fell closed as well as she lowered her face to yours again. Your kisses were awkward and overly careful, tentative like the first tiny raindrops of a torrential downpour. 

Somewhere in the back of your mind, floating on the peripherals of consciousness, you were vaguely aware of a faint metallic ping, and a dull clattering. Holtzmann's hands made their hesitant way up your waist. The clatter became more insistent and you broke the kiss to glare in its general direction with mingled irritation and confusion. Holtzmann peered curiously over her shoulder at the workbench where the mechanical frog was having an apparent seizure, bouncing around on the table on its own. Suddenly, and with great flourish, it leaped up upon its webbed feet, its chest cavity still gaping open, whirring and churning and spitting the occasional screw or cog. It opened its mouth, struck a pose, and the click of a microscopic tape player was faintly heard. It then began a disjointed and terrifying rendition of the Michigan Rag, and upon finishing its nightmarish performance, thanked its stricken audience and promptly exploded.

Holtzmann ducked instinctively, covering your head with her body as bits and pieces of the ill-fated frog flew every which way. When the air had cleared of the metallic missiles, you both sat up and gaped in horror at the smoldering remains before turning to each other and bursting into hysterical laughter.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jillian, consumed by nostalgia, calls you at three in the morning. You set up a date for the next morning and reunite with Holtzmann for the first time in years.

The other three women stared at Holtzmann in varying degrees of shock and disbelief. Holtzmann slurped her beer loudly and with the satisfaction of a well-told story. 

"IS THAT IT?!" Erin screamed.

"The frog EXPLODED?" demanded Patty. 

"The Michigan Rag?" Abby asked, raising a judgmental eyebrow.

"Yep," the blonde agreed amiably, leaning back in her chair with her ankle propped up on the opposite knee. "Boom!" She made an explosive gesture with her hands. There was a long and expressive silence, broken only by Holtz's garbled slurping. 

"Well, that's one hell of a first kiss." Abby shook her head with a wry laugh. "Fireworks and everything." 

"So...what happened to her?" asked Erin intently. Patty's head whipped around to give her a warning look, but it went unnoticed. Holtzmann's nonchalant grin faded imperceptibly. "It seems like you guys really hit it off with a bang--sorry I had to--but you obviously didn't stay together, otherwise you'd have brought her around by--OW!!" Abby had kicked her hard in the shin. 

Holtzmann didn't seem to notice the interruption. "Oh, you know," she dodged with a self-depricating shrug. "Stupid shit...we just...had very different opinions on...practical applications of particle physics and stuff..." she finished vaguely.

"Drop it," Patty hissed in a subtle whisper as Erin opened her mouth again. The other girl quickly shut it. There was a brief but uncomfortable silence before Abby cleared her throat and launched into a pointedly unrelated anecdote. The laughter and cajoling picked up again, but Holtzmann remained unusually quiet and introspective, sipping quietly at her glass.

 

* * *

 

 

You had been sleeping.

It had been a very nice sleep, so deep that even your stress dreams couldn't push through the fog. Unfortunately, the insistent ringing of your phone certainly could. The device in question rattled alarmingly on your bedside table, the old fashioned bell screeching merrily into the darkness of your apartment. Groaning, you pawed around for a moment, managed to knock the receiver out of its cradle and onto the floor. Grabbing the cord you blindly pulled it back toward you and held it up to your face, which was still buried in your pillow.

"Mmmrrrfff???" you mumbled into what you vaguely hoped was the right end.

There was only the static-y white noise of dead air for a moment, before a distinctly familiar voice caused you to jerk suddenly very much awake. "Hey."

"Holtz?!" you rasped groggily, groping for the clock. "It's--it's three in the morning!"

"Yeah, sorry about that...are you awake?" she asked sheepishly. 

You stared at the receiver in disbelief. "Am I--are you--??? No, I'm SLEEPING!"

"Sorry," she said again without really sounding it. 

You could feel the familiar ache of a very special kind of migraine starting and rubbed the bridge of your nose, sighing loudly. "O-okay, Jill. Why are you calling me at three in the morning?"

There was another static-filled silence. "Oh...you know, just...waxing nostalgic."

"At three in the morning."

"Thought I'd give you a call, see how things are going."

"At three in the morning."

"I might be a little drunk."

"At--okay, just..." you sighed again and pushed yourself up, swinging your legs over the side of the bed and flicking on your bedside lamp. "Jill, look...I'd love to get together and catch up. Really, I'm not just saying that." You could actually hear her perk up on the other side of the line. "But can we do this at a more reasonable hour?"

"Tomorrow?" she asked hopefully.

You glanced at the calendar on your wall. You had a deadline coming up much sooner than you'd like, but technically you didn't have to go into the office tomorrow, one of the few perks of what passed for scientific journalism. "Sure. We can meet for coffee. Perky's at 10? I feel like I'll need it." Without needing to see her, you knew exactly the face she was making. That stupid grin she made when she knew she was in trouble but didn't actually feel bad about it at all. "Stop that," you demanded.

"I missed you too," she replied. You slammed the phone down hard.

 

The next morning found you sitting outside the coffee shop far earlier than you had intended. After last night's interruption, your sleep had been plagued with deadline nightmares and for some reason, an evil mime. You'd never been afraid of mimes before, but that had certainly changed. You had woken up hours before you needed to, and decided to head out early rather than rolling around sleeplessly in bed for another several hours. At the very least you could get some work done before Holtzmann arrived. So, you found yourself at a nicely shaded table, a cup of your favorite coffee steaming next to your laptop. 

As far as journalism went, the New England Journal of the Para-Irregular wasn't the most prestigious or respectable publication to write for, but the sporadically released paper was at least more selective about its stories than the infamous Enquirer. It was also certainly not your dream job by any stretch of the imagination, but it paid the bills while you worked on your real pet project. With a resigned sigh, you resumed your work on an embarrassingly detailed investigation into what your editor called "Squatchfoot". While the subject made you seriously question whether life was worth having to deal with this kind of nonsense, at least no one could say you weren't thorough. 

"What the hell is Squatchfoot?" You slammed your laptop shut violently at the bemused voice behind you, nearly upsetting your coffee mug. You slowly turned to glare at the woman bending over your shoulder. 

Holtzmann hadn't changed much, rather she'd grown into herself. Her blonde hair was as apocalyptic as ever, and her sense of fashion still looked like she'd fallen into a donation bin at a thrift store, but she wore it so much more stylishly. For your impromptu reunion, she'd deemed it appropriate to wear a pair of high-waist tweed slacks with suspenders and a matching vest left open to reveal a cropped Bikini Kill shirt (you assumed she had done it herself, probably with a chainsaw or something equally absurd), a green army jacket, and oxfords with mismatched argyle socks. She'd swapped out her large square glasses for smaller, round yellow spectacles. Most noticeably, however, was the way she carried herself with such confidence and comfort. She was a far cry from the shy, awkward teenager you had grown up with. 

"Jilly!" In your surprise, you reverted to your old nickname for her without thinking about it. 

She grinned widely as she took the seat across from you, sliding into with a weird grace all her own. "Haven't heard that one in a while," she remarked, helping herself to your cup of coffee. She grimaced and took another gulp before setting it down. "Needs more sugar."

"You can get your own!" you exclaimed, pulling the cup pointedly closer to you. Different appearance, same Holtz. "Anyway what the hell was that all about last night?"

"Just like I said," she explained casually, one foot bouncing on the opposite knee. "Got drunk and nostalgic and wanted to catch up a little bit. What's Squatchfoot?"

"Drop it," you grumbled irritably. Holtzmann arched a blonde brow at you over her glasses, leaning back in her seat with one arm slung across the back of the chair. "It's just a stupid project for work, it's nothing important."

Holtzmann seized on this and suddenly leaned forward. "Oh yeah? Where are you working now? I heard you were writing for some bio-science journal."

"You heard wrong," you mumbled with a grimace. You hoped she would let it go, but she stared at you expectantly for an uncomfortably long time, so with a sigh heavy with embarrassment, you pulled your file folder over and fished out the latest issue of the New England Journal of the Para-Irregular for which you had written a piece on the biological probability of the Loch Ness monster. Resigned, you handed the publication over. Holtzmann didn't even glance at the cover, just seized the magazine and started flipping through to find your article. She settled down to read it with the same focus and intensity you remembered from so long ago. Over the top of the pages you could see her eyebrows raising and contracting as she read and you felt heat rising up in your cheeks. You should have been writing for prestigious intellectual journals, not a tabloid wrapped transparently in the guise of pseudo-science. Then again, it was exactly the kind of thing Holtzmann would eat up, you knew. 

"Not what I would've expected from you," Holtz remarked when she finally set the journal down, spreading the pages out.

"Yeah, me either," you agreed wryly. 

"It's good stuff," she assured you. 

"Just because I don't believe it doesn't mean I should do a half-assed job." You picked absently at a tear in one page. "At least, I hope more distinguished journals will see it that way." With a determined shake of your head, you changed the subject. "Anyway, what about you? I heard you were up for CERN?"

Holtzmann grinned awkwardly. "Yyyyyyeeeeeaaaahhhh...there was an incident..." Uh oh. "Heard he moved a finger the other day though, so that's good." 

You decided you didn't want to know. "So what are you doing instead?" 

"I'm a Ghostbuster." She leaned back, exuding pride like a displaying peacock. 

"Of course you are." You rubbed the bridge of your nose. You had been chasing down a half-baked lead on a Jersey Devil sighting when the entire population of New York City had apparently lost its collective shit, but you'd seen the news reports. Most non-NYC programs were attributing it to mass hallucination caused by contaminated water and regarding the self-proclaimed 'Ghostbusters' with amused disdain. "I should have known if some weird shit happened in New York you'd be right at the center of it," you said without malice. 

Jillian took the comment well, grinning widely at you. "You know me," she admitted, spreading her hands. "Jillian 'Weird Shit' Holtzmann."

"Speaking of which, did you ever end up getting that tattoo of Mulder on your ass?" you asked through reminiscent laughter.

Her grin widened mischievously. "Wanna see it?"


End file.
